


Masquerade

by thedevilchicken



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Clothed Sex, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Identity Porn, M/M, Masks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 22:29:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19071973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Leonardo attends a masquerade ball. He would know Ezio anywhere, even in a mask, but he's not sure Ezio could say the same for him.





	Masquerade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeverwinterThistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/gifts).



Ezio is wearing a mask and the light is low, but Leonardo would know him anywhere. 

Logically, he knows the same is very likely to be true in reverse: Ezio should know him. They speak every time there's a new codex to decipher and a new-old upgrade to make, and Ezio is an Assassin - he's been an Assassin almost since the time they met, in Florence, years ago. He can be oblivious sometimes, yes, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have one of the sharpest minds that Leonardo knows. He appreciates that about him. 

They're very different people and they have very different skills (though he likes to think they're complementary), but Ezio notices things. However, watching him dance from across the room, Leonardo also knows from time to time he just doesn't put two and two together in the most straightforward of ways: sometimes he comes up with five, and sometimes he bypasses the sum completely. He has enough doubt that he can't be entirely sure. 

The players pause between dances and Ezio bows to his masked partner before he leaves the floor. For the past two hours, whenever he's between partners, Ezio has been drifting across the room toward him with a drink in each hand. The first time, Leonardo thought it might be a coincidence, and he might throw one drink back and then start on the next, but he handed one to him in silence. He was too surprised to refuse, so he took it.

Ezio makes his way across the room again, weaving with two glasses held up high as if that might stop them spilling instead of just raining on society women's beautiful dresses. It's good wine - who would expect less from the Borgias - and the heat from the lamps and the candles and the sheer bulk of people that have squeezed into the rooms makes Leonardo especially grateful for it. 

He drinks, and Ezio drinks. They're close together by a door where there's a little breeze blowing in from outside, through the rather grand entrance hall, but in the Roman summer even the breeze is warm. It's stifling, and Leonardo can feel a trickle of sweat making its way down his spine underneath his doublet. He feels sticky and awkward and Ezio, in his masquerade costume just as heavy as his is, looks infuriatingly perfect and unfazed. 

Then Ezio leans closer. He leans down to Leonardo's ear and says, "Do you want to get out of here?" His breath on Leonardo's skin makes him shiver and the room's so loud with chatter and music and dancers' footfalls on the floor that he's almost not sure he heard what he heard. But then Ezio's gaze flicks to the door and back and as Leonardo's cheeks blush underneath his mask, he nods. 

As they leave, he doesn't speak. The sound of the music starts to fade into the background as they walk out through the doors and here and there as they step into the street there are other partygoers leaving, stepping into carriages, taking late night strolls under the stars. Leonardo came to the party at his Borgia masters' request, and they sent a carriage to deliver him; Ezio probably rode his horse and slipped in uninvited through an open window, though Leonardo finds where he hides that horse is still a mystery to him.  
They walk instead. It's cooler outside, though not enough to actually be considered cool, and Leonardo wishes he could shed his mask and his expensive doublet that the Borgias sent him with the carriage but he doesn't want to ruin the illusion yet. It's a pleasant kind of warmth to think that Ezio asked him to leave with him for reasons that have nothing to do with their acquaintance, or the Assassins or the Templars, or weaponry, or secret wars. So he doesn't ask where they're going. It's a pleasant kind of fiction he'll sure will be fractured soon enough. 

But then they turn a familiar corner and Leonardo, who knows this city, who has mapped this city and can see its plan in his head without a second thought, suddenly knows where they're going and not just where they are. He'd expected a left turn toward his workshop, or to carry on straight across the bridge toward where he knows Ezio's been staying, but they turn right. Under his mask, Leonardo frowns. At the next corner, as they turn it, his frown just deepens. Soon, they arrive, and he knows where they are: the door that Ezio opens is the door to the Rosa in Fiore. He doesn't understand. 

"Do you want to come inside?" Ezio asks. He's still wearing his mask but it was never very much of a disguise: it covers his eyes and his nose, with a beak shaped like an eagle's that Leonardo finds both apt and endearing, but it doesn't cover his mouth so he can see the scar across his lips. He wonders if this is a trick but Ezio has never been particularly subtle and besides, the thinks worst that will happen is him awkwardly refusing one of Claudia's pretty girls. 

Leonardo nods. They go inside and Ezio's mask fools no one; not a soul in the room bats an eye as he leads the way upstairs. He opens a door. They go inside. And Leonardo is not ignorant, he's not sheltered and he's not dimwitted, and he knows what these rooms are used for. There's a neatly-made bed sitting on the bare, worn floorboards, and a table and two chairs and very little else besides. There's a lamp turned down low enough that they barely even cast a shadow, but it still shines against the gold leaf on Ezio's (likely stolen) mask. 

"Do you know where we are?" Ezio asks. 

Leonardo nods. 

"Do you know what they do here?"

Leonardo nods. 

Ezio comes closer. Leonardo steps back; he bumps against the door, the doorknob in his back, but Ezio doesn't stop. He comes closer. He presses one hand to the door at either side of Leonardo's shoulders and Leonardo finds he's more grateful than he's been all night that his mask covers his entire face, except for the space at his mouth he's likely stained with wine. He's tied back his hair and his clothes are unfamiliar and he wants to believe that Ezio has no idea who it is he's brought there because if he does, this is a joke. It has to be. 

Ezio moves. He presses one hand to the centre of Leonardo's chest and then drags it down, over the buttons in his doublet, lower, in between his legs. Leonardo swallows. He's had too much wine already, but he'd kill for just another glass to steel his nerves. 

"Do you want this?" Ezio asks. 

Under his mask, Leonardo bites his lip. He's wanted this for years. He really can't lie and say no and so he nods again. 

He half expects that to be where the night ends, with Ezio admitting who he is and Leonardo pretending that he never knew, and maybe they could go back to how things were before, eventually, once the embarrassment wears off. But Ezio doesn't move away. He unbuttons Leonardo's ridiculous trousers with deft fingers, deft as his own except they're trained for quite a different purpose. Ezio pulls down, just far enough to expose him to the heavy, baking air. He didn't expect that. 

He's already half hard when Ezio's hand closes around him and strokes him slowly till he stiffens. His grip is firm and confident, just like he is in everything, and Leonardo rests his head back against the door. He should tell him to stop, he thinks, because he wouldn't be doing this if he'd realised who's beneath the mask, but he can't form the words and he frankly doesn't want to. Ezio strokes him, slowly, base to tip to base to tip, teasing till he's pressing his nails into his palms to keep from groaning. He bangs his head against the door. He takes a shaky breath. Then Ezio pauses. Then Ezio steps back. 

"Go to the table," he says, and Leonardo has to take a moment to gather himself to do that. He holds his trousers by the waistband and he goes there, footsteps on floorboards, music and laugher and the faint sound of sex in the air, and he leans back against the table's edge. He's anxious. He's ashamed. He shouldn't be doing this. 

"Touch yourself," Ezio says with a strain in his voice Leonardo's never heard before, and he shouldn't, but he does. He wraps one hand around his cock and he strokes himself as Ezio sits down on the trunk at the foot of the bed. Ezio's watching, his eyes are on what Leonardo's hands are doing, so he thinks he _must_ see who he is now; his hands are stained with ink and paint, but he shows no sign at all of realisation. He unbuckles his belt and unlaces his trousers and when he slips his hand inside to stroke himself, Leonardo's eyes are wide as cartwheels. 

"Turn around," Ezio says, and Leonardo is reluctant - he wants to watch, because that's so much more than he ever thought he'd have - but he does exactly as he's told. He turns. 

"Lean down," Ezio says, so he does that, too. He leans on his hands first, and then goes lower, on both forearms. He can feel his trousers slipping, the weight of the ridiculous fabric pulling them lower. 

"Move your legs apart," Ezio says, and he hears the groan of the bed's wooden frame as he stands. He shuffles his feet apart and he can feel his cheeks blazing underneath his mask, not only from the heat. He's exposed from the small of his back to the backs of his knees and he knows Ezio is looking at him. Ezio's eyes are on him, on the parts of him he's exposed in the lamplight, and then Ezio's _hands_ are on him, at his hips and moving down, stroking his thighs. One slips between his legs and cradles his balls, takes their weight, squeezes. It moves again and gives his cock a purposeful stroke. Leonardo shivers. 

There's a bottle on the table that Leonardo had barely noticed, but he notices as Ezio reaches for it. There's a liquid inside, clear, and he smells oil when Ezio removes the stopper. He shouldn't have let it go this far. He should stop it, he thinks, right now, but before he can say _wait!_ or _Ezio, it's me!_ or any of a hundred things that would make him pause, Ezio's fingers are parting his cheeks and he's pouring a thin drizzle of the oil between them. He can feel it hit the indent at his coccyx and run down slowly, over his hole, his perineum, his balls; he can hear it dripping to the wooden floor, though he doubts it's the worst they've ever seen. 

Then he feels something against him, circling the rim of his hole. For a moment he thinks it's the pad of Ezio's thumb, but then he understands; pressure increases, and Ezio's hands grip his hips, and the knowledge floods him that the thick tip of Ezio's cock is starting to push into him. He presses both hands flat to the table. He rests his masked cheek against the worn old wood. And he feels it as his hole begins to open up, he feels it as Ezio's slick length pushes in, as he takes him inch by inch. He's big, he's long and thick and hot and heavy, but that's precisely how he wants it. When Ezio moves, just a few slow rolls of his hips before he thrusts in earnest, that's how he wants it, too. 

Ezio's hands move to his waist and they hold him there as he bucks his hips and fucks him. With his head turned the way it is, Leonardo can see the window; he can't see much outside but the occasional light but what he can see is their reflection in the glass, the way Ezio withdraws right to the tip and then pushes back inside him, then gives a few sharp snaps of his hips before he pulls back out again, and pushes in, fucks him with the tip, takes him deep, takes him hard. There's no rhythm, there's no pattern to hold onto or steady himself with, and the effect makes Leonardo's muscles twitch and shiver. His knees feel weak. His cock is hard and flushed and heavy, rubbing now and then against the table, but it's not enough. Ezio seems to know that. He rakes his nails down Leonardo's back under his shirt and then he slips one hand around him, wraps one hand around him, and begins to stroke. 

What wasn't enough is now almost too much. Ezio's length inside him and Ezio's hand around him and the terrible light and the not quite level table and the room in that place of all places all add up to something Leonardo can't explain except his own hips shift, against Ezio's hand and then back to take him in as deep as he can go. He's suspected that Ezio might have had encounters with men on occasion, but he's never suspected this. And the more he thinks about it, Ezio's cock in him and his thumb teasing at the slit in his own, the tighter his chest feels and the tighter his stomach feels and his toes press tight to the soles of his boots and his fingers press tight to the top of the table and he presses his mouth into a thin, tight line so that when he comes, hard, jerking, shaking, pulling tighter, he doesn't groan out loud and give himself away. 

He spills over the tabletop. A few more arrhythmic thrusts and Ezio spills inside him. And for a moment, a long moment, Ezio just stays there, still in him, as they catch their breath. For that moment, Leonardo almost doesn't mind that he's too hot and his clothes are sticking to his skin with sweat, or that when Ezio pulls out he feels the lack of him acutely because he also feels his come spill down slowly to the back of his balls. Ezio rubs his fingers through it, makes him shiver with it, and then he steps away and suddenly all Leonardo can feel is everything that's wrong with this. He's filthy and ashamed that he wanted this so badly that it overrode his reason. 

Slowly, he pushes himself up. Slowly, he turns. Ezio's sitting there on the trunk again, still exposed and still softening. He's starting to unbutton his clothes; Leonardo watches mutely as he takes off his jacket and removes his shirt, and it catches on his mask's golden beak so he takes both off. He had no doubt that it was him but it's definitely Ezio, just with a thin outline on his skin where the mask used to be. He smiles wryly, stripped to mid-thigh, and rubs his face as he looks at him. 

"Should I have kept it on?" he asks. 

Leonardo shakes his head. 

"Are you going to take yours off, too?" 

Leonardo shakes his head. 

Ezio chuckles as he pulls off his knee-high boots. He takes off what's left, not slowly but not hurried, till he's naked except for the gauntlets Leonardo made for him that he's still got at both wrists. Ezio is deadly and Leonardo knows that. He doesn't like to admit it, but that might be part of the attraction. If he's not careful, it might also be the end of him. 

Once he's naked, he stands. Once he's standing, he comes closer. He doesn't move any differently like that, and he doesn't even seem any different from when he's walking in the street or running on a rooftop, like his nakedness is nothing. Leonardo is still exposed himself but he can't feel so nonchalant about it. Especially not when Ezio is there, bringing his hands up to the mask over Leonardo's face. 

He reaches back and he unties the ribbons that are holding it in place, and Leonardo doesn't stop him. It's somehow easier to let him do it than it is to do it himself, but that's not to say it's easy. His stomach is a twisted mass of knots. His mouth is dry. His face is hot. And he expects the look on Ezio's face to change once he sets the mask aside; it does, it does, but not how he expected. 

Ezio smiles. "Wasn't that thing hot?" he asks. "I couldn't have worn it." 

"You knew it was me?"

Ezio chuckles. He rests his forehead down against Leonardo's. He cups his jaw in both his hands. 

"I might be slow sometimes," he says, "but I can usually catch up." He nudges Leonardo's nose with the tip of his own. "Of course I knew." 

When Ezio kisses him, his hands still at his jaw, Leonardo trails his fingers lightly down the length of Ezio's bare spine. When Ezio kisses him, pressing his scarred lips to his, it's almost as sweet as the relief he feels. 

"Come to bed," Ezio says, so he goes to bed. All he has to do is ask and he'd go anywhere. 

"Stay the night," Ezio says, so he nods to say he will. And Ezio turns out the lamp.

Underneath the sheets, in the dark, Leonardo's hands learn Ezio's body. He'd know him anywhere by sight; soon he'll have the contours of him mapped to match. 

And maybe they both still have work to do, but for now this is more than enough.


End file.
